What Rhymes With Dark
by Rez1
Summary: Syd and Sark and fluff in the... you get the idea. SydSark


Title: What Rhymes With Dark (PG-13)  
Author: Rez  
Summary: Mid-S2 silliness. Syd and Sark and fluff in the … you get the idea.  
Disclaimer: Not mine, no money.  
A/N: My first published piece; might as well add it to archive.

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When the call comes this time I really have no excuse. The second Friday in May: no ops planned or just past, no lingering sprains, half-healed wounds, or unfinished paperwork. I'm unhurt, unscheduled, and unproductive. My turn to be teacher.

We all complain about it. You should hear Weiss. The Agency has reciprocal agreements with all the bases where the specials work out: we swap tactics, play rough, and cherry-pick the ones with our kind of potential. The brass protests but that's Devlin's problem; we keep getting callbacks. It's an obligation, like jury duty.

So it's the night combat test facility in Maryland, and we're gaming. My students tonight are Rangers. The home team's Navy, so the problems start there: chest-pounding and ritual threats uttered through clenched teeth. The lead finally takes charge and gets them in line and we get down to it. They're impressive; it's wrong to call them students. My job is to kill them, so to speak.

Not that I can explain exactly what happened, or why. We're indoors this time; it's light-tight and I've got enough to do dodging the blue-team guys and keeping tabs on my own trio. I don't use the gear, that's the point; no night-vision goggles for me, no green-laser scopes, no tech at all. They pay us to test the men, not the equipment.

We're two hours into the exercise and I'm ghosting the Navy, no real problems, when he synchs up with me in the pitch black and forces my left arm down against my body, cross-locks the other up behind my back. It's so smooth I don't even process it till I get that it's his thigh I'm feeling against my ass and his breath stirring the hair behind my ear. How do I know? The style of it all. For a rogue killer, the man's a class act.

He's got a lock on my knife hand but he'll have to break my wrist if he wants the weapon. I doubt he's planning on that. I wait, no resistance. He says in my ear:

"Agent Bristow. If I promised you a kiss, would you give me the knife?"

Distracting smooth voice, silky accent. I suddenly realize how long it's been since I actually enjoyed anything. I say:

"Sure. And if you'll take me to bed I'll give you the access codes to the comp center at Langley." I try a feint but he's too quick, traps my right leg with his. I shift against him and his hold tightens, but it doesn't take much for me to know he's ready for me in every sense. It's amazing how intense single combat can be.

I'd use it if I could but he's made sure I can't. I hear his voice again, pitched low:

"Darling Sydney. It's so very tempting—" a quick correction of his weight as I test his balance— "but I know you. We'd make mad love and then you'd slip away and there I'd be, bereft and cheated." He tightens the lock for an instant, white fire up my arm to the shoulder. "The knife, Sydney?" He must have goggles, since the knife wasn't a surprise.

I'm miles high, tripping on the adrenaline and the pain in my arm and the feel of his hands around my wrists. I can get out of this. I can do anything. I say:

"You'll get blood all over your nice commando gear."

—Another quick bolt of agony up the arm. I grunt. He sighs, warm exasperation against my cheek.

"I trust it won't come to that. Drop the knife."

I relax, just fractionally. He feels it; I feel him preparing for whatever I come up with next. We're becoming downright conversational on a very basic level.

I do nothing. I say: "I mean, from where I'm already bleeding."

He's absolutely still, not even breathing.

It's true. There's a medium-deep slash on my right arm, opening just above the elbow, running over the bicep to the shoulder. I collected it earlier but his loving touch has started it bleeding again. I add:

"Can't you smell it?" —And his next move's completely unplanned. He drops his head and inhales.

The sound's like a freebase hit to my cerebral cortex; plus I channel what he's getting, the metallic tang, the erotic jolt when he figures out—not quite instantly—that it really is my blood he's smelling. His sleeve'll be sticky with it.

That's all I need, and it's a good thing; the supply's limited. I drop out of his circumference like Newton's apple, his hold on my arm giving me one more lash of pain before his grasp slips and I'm free.

The olfactory: dominant and most primitive of senses; can't be denied, overridden, or explained away. He smells of clean sweat and triple-milled soap. Hence the disorder of my thoughts.

I roll and pivot beyond arm's length and crouch for a half-second to sheathe the knife and slip its lanyard over my head. I'm completely dark-adapted, very photosensitive. I move, just seeing his profile, black on black, less than ten yards away; he's motionless, head turned so he can hear me. I realize I'm hooked. I could do this forever.

I circle to his right; he'll have to turn if he wants to keep listening. He turns. I reach under his arm as I glide by and press the pommel of the sheathed blade against his belly. His lightning reach misses my hand, but he gets the knife, and I get a single second in which to tell him:

"You're down one kiss." I hear his soft laugh behind me as I fade through the concrete maze.

I'm in no position to demand answers; I don't hang around to learn why he showed up in the first place. But I assume, at least, that he left empty-handed, one very fine cobalt-alloy tactical knife excepted.

I'm sure I'll get around to mentioning the extra player but everyone knows protocol isn't my strength. They'll probably see us on the playback and ask, anyway. I finish the game, mark all three of my men and all of the other team's as well, the Navy having involuntarily donated a replacement knife. The one who got me gets a bottle of Don Julio, standing wager.

I call my designer the next day to commission another weapon. He makes me promise to send him the original, if I ever find it again: bad luck to keep both, he tells me solemnly. I request a playback of the game, trying to figure it out. They were testing a new scope, but that can't account for it. I suggest an inventory anyway, to make sure they're not missing any prototypes or samples.

I screen the playback. There's a blind spot in the facility's IR imaging coverage. Guess where.

Sunday night I fly home, with stitches and precautionary injections and a lecture from the medic. I've got some pills for bedtime. I don't take them. I have a class Monday morning.

I oversleep anyway. My arm hurts like hell but it's amazing how good I feel. I'm inching my way onto the freeway before I realize it's the first sunrise since I can remember where I didn't have to fight my way out of another haunted scene, from the endless supply my sleeping brain's got filed—

—Dusty warehouses, intimate murders, Michael Vaughn's voice in my ear.

It's nice to dream of blue eyes, for a change.

_End_

April 6, 2003


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